'Johns' Claim Entrapment By Police

An early-morning beer run became a trip to the county jail for Robert Perry this month.
An undeserved trip to jail, as Perry will tell you.
Perry, 64, was one of the 32 men arrested in connection with a five-day prostitution sting conducted by the Brooksville Police Department that ended Sept. 15. A female officer posed as a prostitute and the "johns" who approached her and offered money for sex were arrested.
Chief George Turner championed the sting as a successful first step toward cleaning the streets of violence and drugs.
Perry says it was pure entrapment on the part of the police and that there are others he's spoken to that feel the same way.
For Perry, it was eye contact with the young lady standing behind the gas station that started the trouble the morning of Thursday, Sept. 11. Perry, the owner of a custom golf cart business, was at Ponce De Leon Boulevard and W. Jefferson Street to pick up a 12-pack for later that day.
Perry doesn't deny he gave the officer a second look.
But she approached his van first, Perry claims, and asked if he had money. Yes, he had money.
Then the officer used a slang term to ask if he would pay $30 for oral sex, Perry said.
"She proposed, but I did not agree to pay her one dime," Perry said. "I told her, 'Shut the door, you're making me nervous.'"
The officer told him to pick her up "over there," giving a vague direction towards the north. Perry says he went south and was driving away when he was pulled over by a marked police car, arrested and charged with solicitation of a prostitute.
Perry is currently on the lookout for a lawyer that will help file a class-action lawsuit.
David Jett tells a similar story.
Jett, 46, says he pulled into the same parking lot and the officer "kept persisting and asking if I have money."
He continues: "I never agreed to anything. Next thing, I know, (police) were all over me."
Jett, a tractor mechanic, says the whole process was confusing because he didn't understand why he was being arrested at first.
"It all happened so quick," he said.
Another suspect, Joseph Messina, 46, was making a bathroom stop at the BP station when he said the decoy prostitute approached him on Wednesday, Sept. 10. He said she pestered him and he "played her game" for a few minutes until it "started to freak me out."
He knew she was a cop because she was "too clean to be a hooker."
"I had no intent to pick (up) this girl," he said. "I was trying to leave the damn parking lot."
He was getting in his truck to drive off when he was surrounded by police officers with their guns drawn. Messina said he had to borrow the money to pay his bail, then shell out another $200 for the impound fee to recover his truck.
Chief Turner said the entire proceedings were recorded on audio and under surveillance. Whatever issues the arrestees have will come out in court, he added.
"The fact is, no one was entrapped," he said.